SENSE AND NONSENSE IN THINKING ABOUT ANOMALY AND METAPHOR

In an attempt to determine how subjects dealt with four types of logical sentence relationships when a figurative possibility was present, two different experiments were run using a procedure originally developed by Steinberg (1970a). Results indicated that a great many anomalous sentences are readily classified as metaphoric and that individual differences play an important role in the use of these categories. Further analyses revealed that sentences having the order “The ‘human’ is an ‘animal’ ” were more easily classified as metaphorical than sentences having any other order in the present set of sentences. The findings were discussed in terms of their implications for semantic theory, where it was noted that metaphoric diction makes a purely logical analysis of language exceedingly suspect and that any attempt to define sentence universais must include not only figurative language, but individual differences as well. © 1979, The Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.